


We Were In Screaming Color

by lukeinallhisglory



Series: Spence [1]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Boys In Love, Boys Kissing, Budding Love, Declarations Of Love, Developing Relationship, Fluff, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, I think?, Light Angst, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mutual Pining, Non-Graphic Smut, POV Spencer Reid, Pre-Relationship, S9E23 and E24 Spoilers (sorry I was trying to avoid any specific episode references but I fucked up), Sad Spencer Reid, Smut, Worried Derek Morgan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:13:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26134786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lukeinallhisglory/pseuds/lukeinallhisglory
Summary: The one where it takes them a bit, but eventually Reid and Morgan do get their shit together.-Alternatively: Remember that one episode where Reid gets anthrax poisoning and Derek is there while they're hosing him down after he leaves the house? Literally no one will ever convince me that was nothing.  This plot has nothing to do with that, I'm just saying.
Relationships: Derek Morgan/Spencer Reid
Series: Spence [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2043742
Comments: 27
Kudos: 194





	1. Two Paper Airplanes Flying

**Author's Note:**

> Hello!
> 
> Sooo this is my first foray into this realm, so I'm really anxious to hear what you think of this. I also know that I could never do Reid's voice justice so go easy on me. 
> 
> All titles from "Out of the Woods" by Taylor Swift. Yes, I know this is back to back Taylor Swift titles, trust me I'm more embarrassed than you could ever be.

I looked up from my book with a heavy yawn, noticing for the first time that the cabin was dark and quiet around me. The only light was mine, but it was just strong enough to illuminate Morgan across the aisle, legs stretched out towards me. He met my gaze as I shifted, his expression soft and if I knew him at all, slightly concerned. This was not an uncommon occurrence these days, I had started to notice his concerned gaze on me more and more frequently, and I couldn’t help but enjoy holding his attention. The thought burned hot down my spine, this moment out of a thousand moments that felt like _something_. Like any second now the teetering, almost-almost-almost of our undefinable relationship would finally click into place. 

I stretched my legs out in front of me, letting my ankle bump against his and stay there. I honestly just wanted to touch him. Even this tiny point of contact was enough. He didn’t say anything, but he uncrossed his ankles and swung his foot over so that mine was trapped in between. I think what gave me away, tipped us both off to the fact that this was a link in the chain of a million almosts, was the fact that I fell asleep like that. And probably the way I had looked at him. I had never really been able to conceal anything from Morgan, he’d always been able to piece together anything I tried to hide.

The next time we were on the plane he sat across from me again and he looked up at me heavily, daring me to touch him. We spent the next few months flying with our feet tangled together, the only acknowledgment of it consisting of tension-filled stares across the aisle. And then one day out of the blue Morgan dropped down next to me, entirely too close, his whole left side pressed against my right. I looked up at him, surprised, and he smiled and reached up to tuck a loose curl behind my ear. When I fell asleep it was with my head on his shoulder. Even though I had been content with a small point of contact, I could admit that this was much, much better. It was then that I knew I was in love with him, and it dawned on me scorching and already twisting with hypothetical pain that this might end very, very poorly.

He woke me up with the gentle brush of his fingers down my arm and a soft, “Spence.” It made me shiver and sent my mind reeling for an explanation other than the painfully obvious. Hoping was too much and I had promised myself I wouldn’t do it. I couldn’t remember him ever calling me Spence before. Not even Spencer. He had always called me Reid, but Spence had slid out, perfect and warm, and I never wanted to hear him call me Reid again. This felt disastrously important out of absolutely nowhere, and it scared me because if that isn’t hoping I don’t know what is. His hand was still sitting warm against my wrist, and I caught his fingers in a brief tangle just long enough for me to look up at him meaningfully before we broke apart and followed the team off the plane. I could feel the physical shift when his fingers slipped out of mine from the sheer force of how badly I had wanted him to kiss me.

I caught him alone only once during that case, deep into a late and stressful night. His hand pushed against mine where it sat on the table beside the file I was pouring over. I hadn’t realized we were alone until that point. I looked up at him, but he just laced his fingers with mine and refocused on the papers in front of him. I didn’t say anything, although a million things came to mind. They all felt too melodramatic. Ultimately, I squeezed at his fingers and our hands stayed intertwined until we got up to leave. I spent the entire night wondering if he was going to kiss me, telepathically screaming at him to do it.

At this point, as vague and fleeting as it all sounds, I was fairly certain that Derek and I were dating, in an obscure and electrifying way. It made a strange amount of sense that we would do it this way, ambiguous and tentative. It just didn’t feel that out of place that he expected me to deduce his intentions. It also felt like quite a lot of hints piling up, and that didn’t feel accidental. For one, he hadn’t mentioned a single person sharing his bed since the first time that I pushed my ankle against his. This steady contact had become our routine, particularly on the plane, but he’d started doing other things as well. Things that he had never done before. Like noticing that I was cold and draping his jacket over my shoulders. 

The first time this happened, it caught me so off-guard that I broke off midsentence and everyone turned around to look back at us. I was sure that every single one of them had understood exactly what was happening. Derek didn’t seem to care, although I’m sure he was perfectly aware. He just reached into the pocket of the jacket to retrieve his phone, pocketing it and dragging a heavy hand across my shoulder as I stood overwhelmed and for some reason deeply emotional about being given a leather jacket. 

He also started bringing me coffee and sitting on my desk for a few minutes when he delivered it. These visits were particularly excruciating because he was staring at my mouth about half of the time, and it made it really difficult to concentrate. We didn’t even talk about anything particularly interesting. He always asked how I was and wanted a detailed answer including as many rambling tangents as I could manage. A thinly veiled attempt to keep each other close. He even started to do it when we were out on a case, although those were usually briefer and more acutely concerned. 

After a few weeks of that, it graduated to a simple press of his hand to the curve of my shoulder, thumb brushing once, twice, and then “Coffee?” with a gentle tip of his head to say that I should follow him. At this point, his leather jacket lived on the back of my chair as a testament to the fact that we had graduated to something beyond almost.

“I’m good,” I said around the pen in my mouth, not properly processing.

“Spence,” he murmured, and I looked up at him, realizing what had just happened a second too late. 

“Okay,” I said simply, dropping my pen and standing, straightening my clothes self-consciously under his twinkling gaze.

I followed him down the hall and when his hand found mine it could almost have been an accident. 

I was treading pretty far outside my own realm of expertise, but it was in that moment that I was completely sure we were dating, or whatever equivalent we could manage. That moment, and the weeks of daily trips exactly like it which only drew tighter and tighter with building tension. We still didn’t say anything overt about it, but I guess nothing really needed to be said that couldn’t be communicated through heavy gazes and soft touches. 

But the desire to kiss him was not diminishing. I couldn’t stop thinking about him, and I couldn’t stop worrying about if he was thinking about me. It was torture. Partly because I had sworn I wouldn’t let him consume me, and partly because I wanted him to. 

The first time we were separated for a case after that first night on the plane, I spent the entire time with my stomach twisted in on itself in anxious knots. I considered showing up on his front step as soon as we touched down and confessing all of this. I don’t know if I would have, although it was a nice image. The second I stepped off of the plane, Derek was there. He took my face in his hands to inspect me, his gaze heavy. I was wearing his jacket, had been the whole case, and JJ gave me a knowing look as she walked by. Derek didn’t seem to notice, but I had a feeling he just didn’t care. 

“Look at me,” his thumbs pressed to my jaw and I looked up to meet his burning gaze. “Are you okay?” he inquired softly, hands falling to my shoulders.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I couldn’t help but grin.

“What?”

“No, nothing.” I reached up to cover one of his hands with mine. “You were waiting,” I shrugged.

“Of course I was.”

“It’s 1 AM.”

“Yeah.”

“Derek?” I asked softly.

“What?”

“Take me home?”

He laughed easily. “Yeah, baby, let’s go.” And Derek flirting shouldn’t have been a surprise, and it wasn’t really, but I couldn’t deny that it affected me. He pulled my go bag out of my hand and swung it over his shoulder, reeling me in by the waist and leading me off the tarmac. 

Once we were safely inside of his car, I spoke up again. “I think you should kiss me.”

“Right now?” he turned to me with a grin. 

“Preferably.”

“Preferably,” he muttered to himself, shaking his head. “Ok, come here,” he reached out for me and I shifted closer. He took my face in his hands, somehow distinctly different from a few minutes ago, something in the pressure of his thumbs. He pressed his mouth to mine, firm and intense, and it was better than I ever could have imagined, which honestly surprised me. He bit at my bottom lip and pushed his tongue into my mouth, and I heard the whine come out of my mouth, but I couldn’t have stopped it for my life. When we broke apart, we were both panting. I could not have anticipated how good it would feel to be able to affect him like that. 

“I’m going to say something, but you can’t analyze it, okay?” I said breathlessly.

“Sure, honey,” he smiled at me and started the car 

“Don’t sleep with me if you have no intention of doing it again.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be a problem,” he grinned, pulling out of the parking lot. “And _you’re_ not allowed to analyze _that_.”


	2. The Monsters Turned Out To Be Just Trees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Picking up from the end of the first chapter, what happened the next day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope people have been enjoying this so far, and hope you all like this next part too. I decided to take the creative liberty of giving Morgan semi-healthy communication skills even though I'm almost 100% sure he absolutely would not and he's really one step away from being a completely dysfunctional human. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!

When we came in the next morning, bubbling over with idiotic amounts of joy and touching constantly, the entire team knew instantly what had happened. I could feel their eyes on us all day. And I think it had more to do with Derek than myself, but no one said anything to us. 

I had assumed that we would wait for everyone to leave at the end of the day and maintain some semblance of secrecy, if only just to not feel their eyes on us. We could also theoretically be fired, although I was pretty sure Hotch wasn’t going to report us. So I was unprepared for Derek to appear at my desk with half of the team still scattered around. He tapped at the file I was holding and when I looked up, he murmured, “Can it wait?”

“Yes,” I said quickly, letting it fall to my desk clumsily.

He grinned. “Are you hungry?”

“Sure,” I said even though that wasn’t strictly true.

“I’ll cook if you want to come over?” he reached out and raked my hair back from my forehead, fingers dragging against my scalp. My cheeks blazed, nerves about the visibility and about him in general. 

“Technically, you’ve already cooked for me today,” I smiled at him, blushing even harder as I watched him react to that. 

“Yeah well, technically I’ve already kissed you today but, if you’ll let me, I want to do that again too,” Derek bit back, low and hushed. He was sitting on the edge of my desk now, and I kind of wished spontaneous combustion was a real occurrence. 

I had no idea how to respond to that, which I figured was half of the point. “Oh.”

“So what do you say, pretty boy?”

“Just let me pack up.”

Being in his house was overwhelming, even though I had been there earlier that day, had woken up there. The night before we had gotten in pretty late, and let’s just say I’d been focused on other things by the time we burst through the door. This morning hadn’t been much different. This time I had to figure out all of the little stuff that I was so infamously bad at. Like where to stand while he was cooking so that I wasn’t in the way, but I was still in his space enough. I looked around, but we had both sworn a million times last night that we wouldn’t profile each other, so I tried to take in his space without processing it. 

I knew I was spiraling a little bit, and it only took Derek one glance to know it too. He crowded me against the counter, hands settling on my hips. My hands landed on his arms, my fingers fiddling with the hem of his sleeve.

“Spence,” he murmured. I did my very best to put on a convincing relaxed smile. He chuckled. “What is it?”

“Will it make sense to you if I say it’s both nothing and everything?” I asked wryly.

“Anything specific?”

“I have no idea where to stand,” I said straight out, my heart racing nervously at this admission. 

I felt exposed revealing this, but he just laughed easily. _How was he this relaxed around me?_ “You’re thinking too much.”

He laughed at the look of surprise on my face. “That’s kind of what I do.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Okay, why don’t you grab that file you were working on earlier and come sit right…” he cleared a space on the counter, “Here.” 

I pictured myself sitting on his countertop and for some reason, it made me blush, which did not go unnoticed. “You want me to sit on your counter?” I asked around a half cough to try to push past this fact. 

“Yeah, I like having you close,” and it came out unbearably sincere.

I curled my fingers into his shirt and tugged him closer, pressing in gently to kiss him. He let out a huff and his hands came up to frame my face as he kissed me harder. When we broke apart, he was grinning, fingers tangled in the collar of my shirt. 

“I’ve been wanting to do that all day,” he murmured and let go of me with another peck to my lips. 

I blushed. “Yeah, Derek, I think the whole team could tell that.” And he’d already told me before we left the office. 

“Sorry.” He clearly was not. But he did have enough sense to at least look a tiny bit embarrassed.

“They’ve all known for months anyway.”

“I figured.”

“I’ve been thinking we should probably talk about, um, what this is.”

“Okay,” he said softly as he refocused on cooking. I had been afraid he would laugh or try to dodge the question, but he didn’t sound at all dismissive. “Do you want me to start?” Derek smiled over at me fondly and my heart thundered in my chest.

“Sure.” I did my very best not to fold in on myself defensively.

“I guess I want this to be something, I don’t know, serious? Maybe that’s the wrong word. I’m not exactly an expert on long term. I don’t know what word to use, but I know that I want you.” He was looking down at the food as he spoke, but he looked over at me when he said that. “Your turn.”

“You don’t have to find the perfect word. Whichever word you want to use, I want that too.” I felt awkward and gangly under his gaze and I felt myself dissociating out of pure disbelief. 

“But?” he prompted, reading my apprehension easily.

I smiled anxiously. “I suppose I’m a little confused about what exactly it is about me that you…” I couldn’t finish that question. _Want?_

That got his attention and he turned to me, folding his arms against his chest. “Whether or not you want to believe it, I’m attracted to you, Spence. Is that what you’re asking me?”

“Sort of,” I mumbled noncommittally.

“So what is it you want to know?”

“I can believe that you’re attracted to me based on familiarity and hypotheses around stress-induced misattribution-”

“I don’t know what that means, but I know you well enough to assume you’re claiming I don’t just find you attractive outright and I’ve basically been tricked into it.”

“More or less,” I shrugged, forcing myself not to launch into any more detail.

“Okay, so then what?”

“I can’t figure out what it is about me that makes you want something long term, when as far as I can tell you have never wanted that with anyone before. And I think if I start quoting relationship statistics to you right now you’ll kick me out.”

“I’m not going to kick you out,” he said softly.

“On average people around our age would pursue each other casually for one to two months before fully committing to exclusivity. Which is obscured by the fact that we’ve known each other for so long, but either way 18 hours is definitely outside of any typical range.”

“Do you want to see other people?”

“No!” I said automatically, flustered by the question. “I guess I’m asking because everything else about last night says that it was a one-time occurrence.”

“What about the last few months says one night stand to you?” he looked at me skeptically. 

I didn’t know how to answer that because he was right, and this was all just my own insecurities bleeding out all over us both. “You’re right, I’m sorry. We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”

“It’s fine, Spence. I want to get into messy conversations about your feelings with you. I don’t want you to censor yourself around me. I don’t just want to sleep with you. When I say I want you, I mean all of it.”

“But why me?”

“It’s not explainable, kid, it just is.”

I shot him something between a smile and a grimace. “Right.” It was a deeply unsatisfying answer, but my stomach quieted a little bit at his reassurances.

“I have a fear of intimacy. Practically as a matter of public record. But it’s also by design, and I don’t want to run from you, I’m not sure why exactly, I just don’t. Okay?”

“Yeah.”

“And don’t think I’ve forgotten what you said a minute ago,” he smiled over at me.

“Which part?” I knew exactly which part he was referring to, and the look on his face said he saw through me immediately.

“Come here,” he beckoned me over and I submitted. “You are gorgeous,” he murmured, hands on my neck. “And no number of statistical tangents could possibly detract from that. I’m not going to change my mind about you, I promise.”

I pitched forward gently and pressed my mouth to his. His fingernails scraped slowly at my skin as his fingers curled against me and it sent a shiver running down my back. I pulled away after a few moments, sitting back on my heels again.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he laughed.

“How am I looking at you?” I asked around a grin.

“It was the exact face you made last night before you took your shirt off.” This was news to me, but it was enormously flattering that he remembered that face.

“You remember the–”

“Yes.”

I grinned at him and he rolled his eyes and refocused on the food. I realized suddenly that I hadn’t thought about where I was standing for that entire conversation, and I smiled to myself as I went to grab my work from the other room. 


	3. It All Seems So Simple

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up the next morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who is still reading this, we're definitely going to have at least one more chapter after this, and then I'm not sure how many after that. 
> 
> ALSO this chapter does contain smut, so if that isn't your thing for any and all reasons I totally understand. I'm going to update the tags to reflect this also. I will say it's not like the absolute most graphic thing ever written in case that's helpful to anyone, but it is definitely there.

Sometimes I thought that it should have been harder. After all, neither one of us could really claim to be well adjusted. Easy wasn’t typically in my repertoire, but I trusted Derek implicitly, and I found myself becoming less and less attached to control. Maybe it was because we already knew each other so well. Derek insists that it was pure luck, something that I don’t usually put much stake in myself, but I have always made all of my exceptions for him. 

It was that second morning waking up in his bed that I realized with terrifying clarity just how much I felt for him. 

His face scrunched up as he drifted awake, an unspoken complaint about the sunlight filtering in through the crack in the curtains. “You’re staring at me,” he said before he even opened his eyes. Which was absolutely true, and sent a deep flush running down my neck. 

I turned away from him over onto my back, ripping my gaze away. “Sorry.”

“Didn’t say I wanted you to stop,” he rumbled, slipping his arm across my bare stomach and leaning over me so we were face to face. 

“Hi,” I murmured, grinning stupidly at him. The realization that he was about to kiss me made my entire body hum. 

“Hi.” It was only a single syllable but somehow in that span, he had managed to be absurdly sexy. I spread my fingers against the back of his neck, sweeping my hand up and down along his spine. 

He finally kissed me, and I felt it travel through my whole body, that weightless electricity that I had become addicted to in just over thirty hours. It started out sweet and innocent enough, but after a minute he deepened it to something filthy and slick. His hand settled lower on my stomach, and _oh_ , that’s what this was about. Heat pooled in my stomach, languid and intoxicating, and I wanted him closer. At some point in the midst of kissing me, he had managed to get his thigh between my legs, and I bit down on his lip at the sudden friction. To my amazement he liked that, declaring his approval with a soft growl. I could also feel the solid heat of him against my hip, and between that and his tongue sweeping back into my mouth, I was more than a little bit overwhelmed. He broke away to kiss softly down the column of my throat and I fought desperately to contain the whines that threatened to escape. 

“Want to hear you,” he encouraged, reaching up to ease my mouth open with a tug of his thumb against my bottom lip. 

It felt very, very good to be wanted. Having proof, evidence, that all I had to do was smile at him and he wanted me was exhilarating. I still felt like I had a film of sweat and semen on me from last night. We had showered after the first time, but after the second I refused to even let him stand up, clinging to his neck and kissing him persuasively. Waking up was generally not a sexy experience for me, and I would not have guessed that he would have found me at all attractive and that just made it better. I threw every statistic I knew about relationship pacing out the window. He had to know. 

“Derek,” I mumbled.

“What, pretty boy?” and it was barely more than a whisper, pressed to the curve of my jaw. 

“I love you.”

He pulled back to look at me, fingers threading softly through my hair. “Say it again.”

“I love you,” it came out almost breathless this time. 

“I love you, too, Spence.” 

I knew he was waiting for my queue to return to his previous efforts, so I rolled my hips up against him whining a soft “Please.” 

“Tell me what you want, sweetheart.”

My brain short-circuited between that proposal and the slow friction of my still-rolling hips. It was several stumbling seconds before I could form a thought more articulate than a groan. 

“Want, _fuck_ ,” I stuttered as his fingers circled slowly across my chest and caught at my nipple. I swear for a second I genuinely believed that I might die. And I didn’t care, I just wanted him closer.

He had to prompt me again to get an answer, lower this time as if I needed to be more turned on. “Tell me.”

“Want your mouth,” I panted, and apparently, he liked that idea.

“You’re so perfect, Spence.” He kissed me again, and then his leg shifted away and was replaced by his hand. 

And then it hit me, somehow breaking through as a cohesive thought. “Derek!” I grabbed at his wrist even as my hips stuttered their approval. “We’re going to be late.”

He twisted to look at the clock, cursing when he saw the time. He flopped down on top of me frustratedly, pushing his face into the crook of my shoulder. I couldn’t help but laugh, running a hand down his back sympathetically. “Okay,” he decided. “Gotta make you come now, baby, but I promise I’ll get my mouth on you later.” My eyes widened comically, and he laughed. “What?”

“Nothing,” I blushed furiously, my face scrunching up when his hand wrapped around me and picked up where he’d just left off. 

“Thought I’d just leave you like this?”

“Mm,” I groaned incoherently, nails biting into his shoulder. 

“Spence,” he said softly, his hand stilling. I blinked a few times at the sudden loss of friction and then I nodded. “Good speechless or bad speechless?”

I smiled, reaching up to run my thumb along the line of his mouth. “Good. Very, very good.”

He relaxed, kissing at my jaw softly. “Just let me know if that changes, okay, baby?”

His hand made quick work of me and I spent a few minutes coaxing him over the edge with my fingers and a string of rambling praise that I would deny every word of if pressed about it later. 

The next hiccup came when I realized that I did not in fact have clean work clothes here. Derek found this abundantly amusing. He tossed a pair of briefs at me which I accepted gratefully even though loose didn’t even begin to describe them. He also handed me something else, which I unfolded revealing a black henley that I would recognize anywhere. I stared at him open-mouthed, contemplating the repercussions of walking into an office of profilers wearing the clothing that I had left in yesterday as opposed to wearing a shirt they would all immediately clock as Derek’s.

“I’ll practically be dressed as you,” I said, blushing furiously.

He took me by the waist, kissing across my bare shoulder and up my neck. “Good,” he murmured finally against the shell of my ear. I shivered, which he did not miss. 

I pulled the shirt over my head with a sigh, tucking it in so I could holster my gun to my belt. I blushed furiously when I caught him staring at me, but I didn’t say anything. 

He handed me socks and I didn’t notice until I was sitting down at the kitchen table to put on my shoes that they were specifically mismatched. I looked up at him, amazed, but he was pouring coffee into travel mugs and he didn’t notice. Before I had the chance to bring this up with him, the time on my watch reminded me that I was supposed to be in a rush.

I managed to wait until we were safely on the highway to say something to him. “You gave me mismatched socks,” I said out of nowhere, forgetting that he hadn’t been fixating and spiraling out about this for the last ten minutes like I had. 

His face conveyed this, but he didn’t seem fazed. “Yeah.”

“And you put exactly the right amount of sugar in my coffee.”

He smiled over at me, just an edge of a smirk.

“And you’ve cooked three meals in a row for me.”

“Making toast while you shower isn’t cooking.”

“I ate it, which makes it breakfast. It was hot, which makes it cooked. You cooked breakfast.”

And I could have sworn I heard him mumble ‘ _You’re hot’_ under his breath.

“No one’s ever cared enough… I just wanted to say thank you. No one has ever made me feel safe the way you do, and if I’m not careful I’m gonna cry about it and then you’ll definitely be freaked out.” 

“You’re not gonna freak me out, sweetheart. Cry all you want.”

I smiled at him wryly. “That’s probably true, which kind of scares me to be really honest with you. I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk about this, we’re almost at the office, but I just wanted to say you make me feel seen.” I have always been deeply terrible at expressions of vulnerability, and I kind of felt like I’d just cut myself open and handed him my insides. 

“We can stop talking about it if you want, but I like taking care of you, Spence. We should probably just pick up clothing from your place, but you can wear as many of my socks as you want. Honestly, I think it’s kind of hot that you’re wearing my clothes.”

I opened my mouth and he held up a hand. “Before you say it, I know that’s about possessiveness and I’m not going to deny it.”

“Well I think it’s hot too, so what does it say about me that I want you to mark me as yours?”

He grinned. “That you’re submissive.”

“Did you know that in the last thirty-two hours I haven’t gone more than eight minutes without wanting to kiss you, other than when we were asleep.”

“And before that?”

“Oh, way less.”

“I know you know the number. Just tell me, I want to know.”

“Four minutes, nineteen seconds. While we were delivering the profile to Dayton PD.”

“Should I be offended that it’s doubled?”

“Based on the tells that I’ve picked up on so far, you may have gone as much as eleven minutes without actively wanting to kiss me.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it depends. When you tilt your head to the left, what are you thinking about?”

He let out a startled laugh. “Usually you, kid.”

“In that case, eight minutes and twenty-two seconds.”

“Is this the same eight minutes?”

“Driving to work yesterday, when we parked it took you six seconds to look over at me and tilt your head like that. If I’d been wrong, then it would have been three minutes later right before we got off of the elevator, when you touched my arm.”

“That’s starting to sound a lot like a profile for someone who promised they wouldn’t profile me.”

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to profile you, I just noticed. I can stop.”

“It’s okay, Spence. I don’t want you to change. I actually kind of like you, you know?” he teased.

“Oh,” I said simply, stunned. 

“Is that so surprising?” he chuckled.

“In my experience, yeah. And for the record, I don’t want you to change either. Well, I guess I want you to kiss me more, but other than that,” I smiled over at him and he reached over and laced our fingers together. 

“I’ll see what I can do.”

We made it to work just barely on time, and I determinedly avoided eye contact with everyone as they watched us walk in. I could practically feel bets being won and lost in real time, barely concealed smirks and gazes shifting between us. Derek was smirking when I looked up at him at the entrance to the bullpen. His hand slipped under the leather jacket to sit warm against my waist. I smiled at him, shy under the weight of the team watching us. “Okay, kid.” He sighed. He reeled me in closer and dropped a kiss to my forehead before letting go of me altogether. There were new case files from JJ waiting for us on our desks, and with that, the whirlwind of a new case began and everything else was lost in the background. 

When we boarded the plane a few hours later, I dropped into the seat next to Derek without a second thought, pushing my face against his shoulder. He smiled down at me and I peered back at him with that wide doe-eyed look that so far had been a relatively reliable catalyst for getting him to kiss me. 

And between our conversation in the car that morning, and his general ability to read me pretty well, this was in no way lost on him. “You okay, Spence?” he murmured. His hand settled on my thigh possessively. I could feel a plane-full of eyes on us. 

“Very, very okay,” I said softly, and his fond smile brightened to a grin. Flirting had never been a skill I possessed, and it still wasn’t, but we were both wound tightly enough that barely qualifying phrases did the job. 

And then sure enough his hand cupped the back of my neck and he hauled me in to kiss him, ignoring Emily and JJ’s whistles from behind me. We broke apart, staring at each other heavily for a few seconds afterward. I considered telling him I loved him again, but the risk of the team overhearing us was too high. I figured it was probably already spelled out on my face, for him and for the rest of the team. I spun around in my seat, pressing my back into his chest. He wrapped his arm around my waist, and I reached across to lace our fingers together against my stomach. 

We probably should have been more concerned about displaying a forty-hour relationship in front of the entire team, but we weren’t. We hadn’t discussed it specifically, but this team had been our family for years. I had hidden many things from them over that time, with varying levels of success. In the past I’d mostly hidden things that terrified me, things I didn’t want to accept were real. I didn’t want to hide Derek. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading. I hope everyone's still liking this. Either way, I'd love to hear your thoughts!


	4. I Remember Thinking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They're trying to figure out how to function back at work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you all like this chapter. I'm not sure how many more chapters are left, but like one more probably, which I know is what I said last time. In all honesty, I just haven't decided how to end this and I'm having trouble parting with it.  
> (P.S. I uploaded this chapter at midnight so I have fixed a bunch of typos since then)

We did our best not to let the shift in our relationship change the way we acted at work, with ultimately mixed success. We had been definitively more tactile with each other for the last couple of months, something that the entire team had picked up on. For one, Derek’s hand could be found on the small of my back remarkably more often. Quite frankly, if I hadn’t already figured out the direction our relationship was going, this would have been enough on its own to tip me off to it. 

So in a way, we’d been building up to this, which is the reason both that no one seemed in the least bit surprised, and that none of them felt the need to interrogate us about it. We had fallen into a comfortable pattern of quiet sexual tension over the last few months, but now as two people in a – _Serious? Committed? Important?_ – relationship we had to start over again. We were also incredibly determined not to get a stern lecture from Hotch on this topic, so we wanted to avoid any major shifts in our general working dynamic. 

We started taking our breaks at the same time, something that had been in the making for the last couple of months. Before then, I hadn’t really been one to take breaks at all, but this had always seemed like a definite shortcoming and not something to be congratulating myself on. Derek figured out pretty quickly that I could be enticed into taking a break if he placed a mug full of coffee on top of whatever I was reading, touched me in some way, which typically meant that he would run his fingers through my hair, and asked me how I was doing. He capitalized on this during that first case especially. 

I lifted the cup off of the journal I was reading, taking a sip before I answered. “It’s going alright, almost have the geographical profile narrowed down.”

“I asked how _you_ were. Forget the case for a second, sweetheart,” his voice was much softer than I had ever experienced it within the walls of a police department, and this felt exceptionally significant for no particular reason.

“ _Oh_. I’m good. Better now that you’re here,” I looked up at him from my mug shyly and he was already laughing. Maybe I should have been offended that he found this statement so amusing, but something in the sweep of his fingers across my shoulder blade assuaged my fears. 

“Are you flirting with me, Dr. Reid?”

“That doesn’t sound like me,” I grinned. “So, how are you?”

“I could be worse,” he shrugged.

“What does that mean?” I cleared a space for him on the corner of the table I was working on and he sat down, letting me lean in and lace our fingers together across his lap. 

“No, nothing. I’m fine, the profile is coming along, no more bodies have popped up.”

“But?” I asked softly.

“Nothing. So, Deputy Curran seems to really like you,” he said conversationally and I could almost have believed that he was just trying to change the subject. 

“For a profiler, that was pretty transparent,” I giggled. 

“That or he wants to be a geographical profiler when he grows up,” he mumbled sarcastically.

I laughed, letting him sweep his hand down the back of my neck, dipping inside the collar of my – _his_ – shirt. “You’re jealous,” I said, not as a question or an accusation, but more as a realization.

“Of course I am.”

I stood up from my chair and kissed him briefly, just long enough to sweep my tongue into his mouth, and then I pulled back, one hand on his thigh, the other of the table next to his hip. “Okay?” I asked. I didn’t feel like I needed to elaborate beyond that. 

“Yeah,” he sighed. 

“Okay, I need to get back to work,” I murmured apologetically, squeezing his thigh. 

Navigating the tentative, but very intense, start of a romantic relationship while also navigating our working relationship was difficult. It was confusing and elusive to me in the way that only things like this ever could be. 

At home, the intervals of privacy that we were able to have after we left the office for the day were helpful. When we were away on a case, sleep wasn’t necessarily part of the deal, but we did occasionally get an opportunity. 

I watched a tiny spike of panic in Hotch’s face as he passed out hotel room keys. He ultimately handed me two room keys, the equivalent of _you figure it out_. Derek laughed when I turned to him, fanning the cards out so he could see. He took one of them and gave it back to the kid at reception before slinging his arm around my waist and leading me off towards the bank of elevators. 

We were thankfully alone in the elevator and I leaned back against the wall, letting my eyes fall shut. “Tired?” he muttered. 

I groaned. “So tired.” When I opened my eyes he was watching me with his lip caught between his teeth. “What?”

“Nothing, you’re beautiful.” He pressed in to kiss me quickly. The elevator opened with a soft ding and we stepped out, fingers laced between us. 

When I shut the door behind us, Derek took my bag out of my hand and dropped both of our bags on the chair in the corner before coming back to stand in front of me. He grinned at me, taking me by the hips and pressing me up against the wall to kiss me heatedly. My tired brain was torn between him and sleep, but he eventually won out. 

His hands skimmed higher up to settle on my waist and he pulled me further into the room in the direction of the bed, all without breaking the kiss. He stopped at the foot of the bed, his fingers already dipping under the hem of my shirt to lift it over my head. I let him, and then I got to work on the buttons of his shirt, pushing it impatiently off of his shoulders. He reached down to undo my belt buckle and I hummed into the kiss, pulling back a few inches. 

“Oh, hi there,” I giggled. 

He grinned and pushed me back so I fell back onto the bed, slipping my converse off and lining them up under the chair that held our bags, adding his shoes before coming back over to me. He climbed on top of me, mouth skimming over the still dark bruises littering my throat. 

“You said you were tired,” he spoke finally. “Do you want to just head to bed?”

I smiled at him, reeling him in to kiss me. “Well,” I started. “We could take this to the shower, abbreviate the process.”

“Should I be offended that you want to abbreviate having sex with me?”

“I think you should be flattered that I’m not already asleep right now,” I nudged him and he climbed back off of the bed, letting me walk him to the bathroom. 

I dropped the rest of my clothing at the entrance to the bathroom. I kissed him and he kissed me back happily for a second and then twisted around to turn the water on. I went to walk in to the shower and he stopped me with an arm hooked around my waist, sticking his hand under the spray. 

“Give it a second to warm up a little,” he murmured. In the meantime, he took my face in his hands and kissed me with mounting passion. 

It was one of those nights that is so beautifully full of emotion and intensity that it barely diminishes over time. By the time we fell asleep, I couldn’t even count the number of times that I’d said I loved him. When I’d offered to list all of the reasons for him, he just laughed and told me to go to sleep, but I made him promise to listen to it in the morning. 

He followed through on his promise. 

I opened my eyes to the incessant sound of an alarm. “Number one: you remembered to set an alarm last night.”

“That’s the number one reason you love me?” he didn’t miss a beat.

“In no particular order,” I chuckled, sighing happily as he leaned in to kiss me. 

“Two: the way you kiss me.”

“And what way is that?” his tone faked annoyance, but his face revealed the underlying amusement. 

“A good way. I don’t know.”

“That is the least detailed answer you’ve ever given me in all of the time I have known you.”

“Three: You never make me feel like I need to know exactly what to say.”

“Can I brush my teeth while we do this?” he asked with a grin. He climbed out of bed, looking back at me expectantly. I followed him eagerly, standing in the doorway while he used the bathroom to at least feign some semblance of privacy. 

“Four: you always want me around.”

“That’s a pretty low bar you’re setting,” he quirked an eyebrow at me while he washed his hands. 

“I just watched you pee.”

“And you can even stick around while I floss,” he teased, pressing a kiss to my cheek while he dried his hands on the towel on the door. 

“Five-”

“Didn’t you just do five?”

“Eidetic memory.”

“You’re the one who taught me that’s only for reading.”

“Five: you’re listening to me even when you pretend not to be.”

“Again, I’m worried about you, pretty boy.”

“Six is definitely all of the nicknames.”

“Always knew you’d have a thing for nicknames.”

“Seven is that you gave me your leather jacket 3 months before we started dating.”

“The fact that you started wearing my jacket 3 months before we started dating is one of the reasons that I love _you_ ,” he agreed. “I have a feeling none of these were the ones you were thinking about last night,” he smirked, catching my eye in the mirror. 

“If I list those right now, we’re gonna be late.” I held eye contact with him even as I felt my cheeks flooding with heat.

“How are you this hot by accident?”

“Eight.” I said softly.

“What’s eight?”

“You saying things like that.”

“Oh so eight is honesty?” he grinned.

“Nine, ten, and eleven are the things we talked about yesterday in the car.”

“Unoriginal but I’ll accept it.”

“I think I might be out.” I admitted.

“That’s okay, love.”

“I need coffee and then I’ll have more.”

“Go get dressed and I’ll figure out how to operate that little plastic thing on top of the fridge.”

“Twelve.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Let me know what you thought, I love hearing from you all!


	5. When The Sun Came Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chapter summaries are my greatest nemesis, but I guess it's just a quiet, non-work day in their relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If there is anyone still reading this, thank you! I hope you like this next chapter. I had like a thousand separate ideas so I hope it came together at least a little bit.

For years work and life were synonymous for me. The team was my family, my friends, the first people to fully love and accept me who weren’t obligated. Happy wasn’t really a state I was familiar with. Fine, sure. Miserable, definitely. But not usually happy. And when I did stumble upon it, it was usually matched with equal brevity. 

Derek felt permanent though, in a way few things ever have. Like I could wake up in fifteen years and he would still be there on the other side of the bed. Being with him made everything else make more sense. Life and love and happiness, but also _me_. Not that he completed me, we were both complete people on our own, but standing at his side made me feel more real, both stronger and much more fragile. Human.

I looked up at Derek, letting my book fall to my lap. He didn’t notice me looking at him. He was focused on the computer balanced on my legs where they were thrown across his lap. I took a moment just to look at him, the pinch of concentration that told me he’d been looking at the screen too long. I reached out and curled my fingers into the open collar of his shirt, running my fingertips against the curve of his neck. 

“Mm,” he hummed, glancing over at me. “What’s up, sweetheart?”

“Almost done?”

He turned back to me, brow furrowing in suspicion. “What’s my tell?”

I grinned. “A mixture of the fact that it’s been about two hours, and that you type faster in the last five minutes or so before you finish a report. Like you’re sprinting to the finish line, I guess.”

He considered this for a second, the look of suspicion softening just slightly with amusement. “If you get to profile me, then I’ll raise you one. You only profile me like that when you want to have sex.”

“What?” I spluttered, my face heating up. “That’s not true”

“What were you thinking about just now when you were touching my neck and analyzing if I was almost done?”

“Okay, there may be some merit to your theory,” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.

“Just give me thirty seconds to save everything.”

I was still blushing, but I went back to reading until he shut the laptop, one hand going to my ankle, dipping up inside the bottom hem of my pants. 

“Can I ask you something?” I murmured, putting my book down again.

“Sure.” He put his other hand on my thigh, settling just high enough to speed up my heart rate. 

“When you used to call me pretty boy before we started dating, you were flirting with me, right?”

He laughed, which I had expected. “Yeah, kid, I definitely was.”

“And that first time you said it when you were inviting me to come with you and Elle to Mexico?”

“Even then.”

“Right, so we could’ve been doing this for that long,”

“Sitting on my couch, or was there something else you were thinking about?” he grinned at me, reaching over to hook his fingers into the space between the buttons of my cardigan, letting it snap back against me. 

“Both?”

“Uh huh?” he took the book from my lap and placed it and the computer aside before he climbed on top of me.

“Hi,” I steadied him at the waist, making space for him between my legs. 

“I have a question for you. The first time I met you when I tried to shake your hand.”

“Oh, god,” I braced myself for the impending embarrassment.

“You told me that it would be more sanitary to kiss,” he was grinning, his face inches from mine.

“That’s true, actually.”

“So you weren’t flirting with me?”

“I don’t know if you remember this, but I actually did end up shaking your hand. _That_ was me flirting with you.”

“I’m honored,” he chuckled, and then he finally pressed in to kiss me. 

I hauled him closer, pushing my hands under his shirt to run along the bare skin of his waist. 

He unbuttoned my cardigan hurriedly, sighing when he revealed my shirt underneath. “You need to wear fewer layers,” he growled, kissing a line across my jaw. 

“Right now, I can’t remember why I have ever put clothing on in my entire life,” I murmured breathlessly. 

“God, Spence,” He groaned and bit softly at my neck as he unbuttoned the top few buttons of my shirt. 

“Will it turn you off if I say I don’t want to have sex with you on this couch?” I asked tentatively, hands still running along his waist. “Not that the sex we have had on this couch wasn’t great, but since the bed is very much available…”

He laughed easily and climbed off of me. He tugged me to my feet and took me in his arms. “Can you explain to me why asking for what you want would turn me off?” he asked in that stern voice that he used when we were about to fight about the way I talk about myself. Fighting meaning incredibly affectionate reassurances that left me feeling incredibly vulnerable.

“Not very spontaneous,” I shrugged.

“Spence,” he sighed. 

I didn’t say anything so he tilted my chin up to look at him.

“All you had to do was ask me if I was almost done writing up my report and I wanted you.” He smiled at me, sweeping my hair back from my forehead. I smiled back shyly. “It’s not going to disappear between here and the bed, okay? That’s all I wanted to say, I just think you need to hear it sometimes.” The stern voice had melted to something much, much softer. 

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I just kissed him again. We stood in the living room tangled together for a few minutes. By the time I dragged him down the hall I’d already gotten his shirt off and lost mine somewhere in the process as well. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! As always I want to know what you think.


	6. Looking At It Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morgan gets shot on a case, arguably it's harder on Reid.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just want to say although I'll probably have other Moreid stuff soon, this MIGHT be the last chapter in this story. There's still a chance if I get inspired, but I make no promises.

“Spence,” JJ said from behind me. I turned around, and the second I saw her I could tell that something bad had happened. The only way to describe her expression was bereft, just on the verge of tears, laced heavily with concern as she looked back at me. 

“What happened?”

“It’s Morgan.” It was a surreal moment as I processed that terrifying thought and all of the possibilities of what could follow it. “He was shot trying to take down the unsub.” My knees gave out under me and JJ caught my arm, her grip firm and grounding.

“Where is he? Is he-” My breath caught in my throat, and I just couldn’t get the question out, wasn’t even sure I wanted to know. If she was about to tell me that he was dead, I would rather spend a few more minutes hiding in the bliss of not knowing.

“He’s okay, he’s headed to the hospital.” Okay didn’t quite feel applicable, but I held firmly on to the fact that he was alive. “I’ll drive.”

“Where was he shot?” I asked as I climbed into the passenger seat of the SUV.

“In the thigh,” she said softly.

“Did it?” I wanted to ask did it miss the femoral artery, but I hit the same stop, I just couldn’t formulate the words. Thankfully I didn’t have to.

“EMTs couldn’t tell.”

-:-

I don’t know how long I spent sitting in that waiting room just staring unfocusedly and thinking about the last conversation I’d had with Derek, and all of the things I wish I’d said. It was so far from normal that it gave me agitated spikes of anxiety as it was happening. Someone tried to give me food more than once, so it must have been a number of hours. JJ was somewhere nearby for most of that time, entirely too familiar at this point with what I looked like grieving. 

At some point a surgeon came out, dressed comfortingly in rumpled scrubs like he’d just stepped out of the operating room. It gave his message a sense of urgency that felt at least partially commensurate to the unsurmountable pain that I felt. He told us that Derek was stable and on his way to recovery, but he refused to be anything other than cordially optimistic. I looked around the circle of my friends, his friends, watching the relief washing over their faces rather than processing the fact that I was crying again. 

“When can we see him?” It was JJ, but I knew it was for my benefit.

“Soon. The doctor will come to get you.”

Soon didn’t feel very soon, but in fairness, it did come eventually, and my ability to gauge time wasn’t entirely intact. I barely processed the walk from the waiting room to his room, but the second I caught a glimpse of him my focus came crashing back, painfully so. I stopped short in the doorway of his room, tears streaming down my face as I finally slackened my grip on the immense terror I had been sitting with for hours. 

“Spence,” he mumbled groggily, and my crying turned into sobbing like a switch I had no control over. 

I couldn’t get to him fast enough, throwing myself into his outstretched arms. I raked in a shaky breath, pressing my face firmly into his neck. “Derek,” I gripped at him hard.

“I’m right here, baby.” I felt a little bit bad that he was the one comforting me, but I couldn’t stop crying and he didn’t seem to mind. After a minute like that, he let go of me, shifted over in that tiny hospital bed, and then he pulled me into it with him, wrapping his arms around me. 

“Are you sure I’m not hurting you?” I whispered, voice watery but the tears ebbing for now. I double-checked that I was on the far side from the bullet wound, breath catching at the sight of the tightly wrapped bandages covering his thigh. 

“I’m fine. I just want to hold you.”

That balled heavily in my stomach as if I could possibly be more emotional. “Okay.” I pushed my face into his shoulder.

“I’m fine, sweetheart,” he said again, barely more than a whisper, his fingers tangled tightly in the hem of my sweater. 

“I love you,” I was crying again, and I pulled back so I wouldn’t get his shirt wet.

“I love you so much, baby. I know I scared you, I’m sorry,” he kissed my forehead.

“ _You_ scared _me_? You must have been so scared, and I wasn’t there,” I reached up to touch his face, running my fingers along his jaw.

“There’s nothing you could have done.” He was wiping my face, and I just couldn’t get away from that shaky feeling like he was slipping through my fingers. I curled in tighter against him, burying my face in his neck again. 

“I should have been there.”

“You couldn’t have known, and it wasn’t even your call.”

“Still.”

“It’s okay. You’re here now, and everything’s okay.”

I nodded, pulling back to kiss him, tears still running down my face. 

I heard footsteps behind me, and I pulled back, twisting around to see Hotch and JJ in the doorway. I also realized JJ was carrying a bag full of books from my desk, judging by the two titles I could see at the top. I was struck by the idea that through all of this JJ was thinking about _me_ of all people. 

I wiped the remnants of tears from my chin and looked back at Derek, but his arm just tightened around me, telling me to stay.

“How are you feeling, Morgan?” JJ asked, putting the books down at the end of the bed and slipping her hands into her pockets. I could tell she was trying hard to seem relaxed, but her posture gave her away.

“About as good as I can, I think,” he chuckled, looking pointedly at me. I blushed and looked away. 

“Well, I’m glad to see you awake, you had me worried for a little while there,” Hotch’s expression was about the closest to a smile that it typically got, meaning completely stoic but not in an angry way. Even though we had been relatively expressive in our affection around the team, it still felt weird to be laying in bed together in front of Hotch, but the thought of letting go of him right now was unfathomable. 

“Did someone call Penelope?” Derek asked, his fingers threading through my hair. 

“Yeah, she’s on her way, and I left her a message when you got out of surgery, so she’ll see that when she lands,” JJ said. I was glad she had done that because I hadn’t been present enough to think of it. In fact, JJ had been the one to tell everyone what had happened, and I was immensely impressed with her ability to hold it together.

For my own part, I was already crying again, prompted by the feeling of his fingers running along my scalp. I was all over the place, fraying around the edges from the heartbreak of sitting in that waiting room bracing myself against the possibility that he might not make it out of that OR. 

“Thanks, JJ,” he said softly. And then to me, “Just breathe, it’s all okay.”

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” I wriggled out of his arms, wiping my face and avoiding Hotch and JJ’s gazes. His fingers were still gripping the edge of my cardigan and he reached out with the other hand to stop me from going. I stayed sitting on the bed with one leg folded under me, ultimately unwilling to fully break contact with him. 

“We’ll give you guys some space,” JJ said gravely, dropping a kiss to the top of my head and leaving with a squeeze to my shoulder. 

“Talk to me,” Derek said as they left. 

“I was really, really scared that I might go home tonight…alone. Completely alone.” I wiped at my cheeks, looking down at my hands so I wouldn’t have to see the look of pity on his face.

“You’re not alone, sweetheart. I’m right here.”

“I know.”

“What else are you thinking about?” He took my hand and kissed a line across the inside of my wrist.

“I love you so much,” I started, and he laced our fingers together, pulling me closer by the hip. I leaned over so I was curled around him propped up on one arm. “I have a hard time trusting people,” I whispered. “And I never thought I’d be the kind of person that gives myself completely over to another person, but I’m yours.” I smiled self-consciously and he reached up and smoothed the frown lines by my mouth with his thumb, his gaze burning into me.

“Spence,” he sighed. “I love you more than anything. You know that, right?”

“No, I know.” I leaned into his hand, my breath wavering at the contact. Every sweet touch was hitting me so much harder than it normally would, and I just couldn’t keep a hold on it. “Honestly, I’m just emotional because there was a non-zero chance of you dying today, and losing you would destroy me.”

“That’s every day for us.”

“Yeah. But today was different.”

“I know, baby,” he stroked his fingers down my jaw.

“God, what if you never called me baby again?”

“If you’re gonna say shit like that can you get back over here?” he tugged on my hand. 

I curled back into his arms, tucking my face into his neck. His fingers wove back into my hair, stroking at my scalp. “My sweet boy,” he whispered. “I really put you through hell today, didn’t I?”

I took a shaky breath, wrapping my arm around his middle. “What can I do to convince you to stay behind a desk for the next thirty years?” I mumbled into his neck.

“This is exactly how I felt when you got shot in Texas.”

“That was different, it was months before we started dating.”

“When Penelope was running back to your room. I couldn’t get to you in time. I couldn’t protect you. That was the moment I realized I was in love with you.” He’d never told me that before, and the declaration made me a little breathless.

“That first plane ride with our feet was the week I got back.” This was not the first conversation we’d had analyzing what the other was thinking before we got together, but this was the first time he’d put a name to what had changed between us before that plane ride. 

“Yeah. You’ve said I looked concerned, but I think if you’d looked longer you would have noticed.”

“I couldn’t look longer because you would have read me in an instant. At the time, my biggest fear was that you’d find out before I had a chance to figure out what you were thinking first.”

“I did read you that night on the plane. I looked at you as our ankles touched and I felt like I’d just watched you undress.”

“You always say that, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Your face. It was just this look of pure affection like you saw something in me that you…wanted.”

“I did.”

“And as I’ve said a hundred times, I knew I wanted you the first time that you apologized to me for rattling off statistics. The very first case we ever worked together.”

“The plane wasn’t the first time it had occurred to me. The first time was the first day that you didn’t come into work after I joined the team. It was my sixteenth day, and the next day when I saw you, I could barely look at you…because I wanted to look at you so badly.”

“And almost a decade later, here we are.”

“It’s been a privilege,” I whispered. His fingers settled on my waist, curling into the fabric of my sweater so it rode up and his hand could sweep up under the layers of fabric to settle warm against my skin.

I could have stayed exactly like that for the rest of our lives. Just enough contact to settle warm affection in my stomach. He fell asleep in a matter of minutes, and I felt tension washing out of me at the sight of him relaxing. I carefully extracted myself from his arms to retrieve the bag from across the room, looking through the options. As I pulled one out, I heard Derek’s soft voice behind me. 

“Come back,” he whined softly. “Can’t sleep without you.”

His words radiated down my spine, and I grinned. I moved the bag so it was within reach from the bed and climbed back into the bed with him, first book in hand. “Sorry,” I whispered, dropping a kiss to his shoulder. 

He slid his arm around my waist and turned onto his side with a soft breath that verged just far enough on the edge of pained that I felt the need to lift the blanket to check on his bandaged leg. “I’m fine, Spence,” he murmured, lowering the blanket and settling his head on my chest.

“Okay, go back to sleep. I promise I won’t leave.”

“Now that you have your books,” he grumbled.

I laughed. “Do you want me to read to you?”

“Is it in English?” his voice was slurred with sleep.

“Yes.” My tone verged just slightly on a question.

“What’s that mean?”

“Old English,” I grinned, thrilled to be so easily read even as he was falling asleep.

“You can give me a recap when I wake up.”

“Okay,” I said softly, and written into the single word was a million things that I’d said a million times, but that I could say a million times again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to everyone who has stuck around with me on this, and I hope to see some of you soon :)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, I would love to hear what you think. The next part will be up soon, I'm just working on where to split it that will make sense. I can't say that I have anything else similar for you to read, but hey maybe you're reading this far in the future and I do?


End file.
